3 Theories About Star Wars: Aftermath's Mysterious Ending

WARNING: This article includes full spoilers for Star Wars: Aftermath’s ending, and explores story elements of The Force Awakens.

Star Wars: Aftermath ends with a big mystery. Its epilogue sees Admiral Rae Sloane standing on the bridge of Ravager, allegedly the Empire’s last Super Star Destroyer, while she discusses the future with an unnamed fleet admiral. They discuss the defeat, weaknesses, and flaws within the Galactic Empire.

At the end of the novel, Grand Moff Pandion is surprised to learn this fleet admiral is still alive. Pandion knows he’s survived because Sloane implies the Empire has another "last weapon" beyond Ravager. This fleet admiral, he matters. He is somebody, he is significant, and he matters to the future of Star Wars.

So who is this unnamed individual?

Some theories.

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Grand Admiral Thrawn

Timothy Zahn’s "Thrawn Trilogy" novels are no longer canon, so the iconic, terrifying tactician Grand Admiral Thrawn currently does not exist in the Star Wars universe. Aftermath’s timeline is very close to that of Heir to the Empire.

Convenient.

The only reason you don’t outright name a mysterious figure like this, particularly in a book as dense with new names as Aftermath, is because the reader would recognize it. Keeping things vague, leading the reader on, that entices them, makes them wonder about what isn’t said as much as what is. In the post-Return of the Jedi era of Star Wars stories, where Thrawn debuted, there’s a certain desire to see the best of the old Expanded Universe / Legends material return.

The fleet admiral in Aftermath could lead in nicely to a Grand Admiral promotion, the reveal of the character as a blue-skinned Chiss, and the canonical return of Thrawn.

Supreme Leader Snoke

Thrawn is the easiest fan theory to jump to, but the fleet admiral could very well be the deepest connection to The Force Awakens in all of Star Wars: Aftermath, and this is the big, wild conspiracy theory I'm most confident about.

What if he’s Fleet Admiral Snoke?

Andy Serkis’ character in The Force Awakens, Supreme Leader Snoke, is a performance-capture character, meaning it’s unlikely he’s human. The fleet admiral on Ravager has no physical description beyond his gender. Again, we come back to the point of not naming characters with recognizable names — Snoke is a massively important character whose name we know. He’s the leader of First Order, which makes this epilogue quote particularly fascinating: "It’s time for something better. Something new. An Empire worthy of the galaxy it will rule."

If that’s not the sound of the First Order’s first seed, I don’t know what is. That quote, more than anything, makes me think this fleet admiral is Snoke rather than Thrawn — particularly given his admission that the Empire has lost. It’s time to rebuild, to create a successor.

This character’s goals, too, line up with a lot of the very Nazi-inspired imagery we’ve seen in The Force Awakens so far. He wants to cleanse the Empire of "burdens," and "Sick animals that had to be culled from the herd."

From there, he could build something new, better, and worthy. And he could do it with "another" Imperial weapon that’s also new, better, and worthy — something like Starkiller Base, perhaps, that could obliterate entire star systems.

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A Major New Villain

Ignoring that The Force Awakens releases in 2015, and forgetting about the now-lost EU canon of Star Wars, it’s entirely likely author Chuck Wendig has set the stage for a spectacular new villain. Aftermath is the first book in a trilogy, remember, and Wendig leaves a lot of threads unresolved by choice. Aftermath’s open-ended finale leaves a lot of room for new problems for new characters — and there may not be a need to make the fleet admiral recognizable.

Perhaps we don’t hear his name because we’re expected to wonder, until the next novel, who this man is. If he’s capable of causing panic in Pandion, and making Sloane wonder how deep she’s gotten, there’s something especially villainous about him.

So who is he? What is his weapon? Where is he taking Sloane and his Imperial all-stars, and who will it affect in the next couple books?